Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1887-01-21
Americans Speak the Best English

Americans Speak the Best English
From. the Pan MN Gasette.
We laugh atthe 81 guess" OF the Yam.
kee, and seem to look upon it as "a phase
Of his own nvention-iOrgetful or una
ware of the fact that early in the seven
teenth century it was in common use, as,
indeed it had been as early as the four
teenth. Is it not employed as the Ameri-
cans employ 1t in Chaucer's lines-
"Of twenty year OF age he was, gesse,"
ana in Shakespeare's
Better far. | guess
That we do make our entrance several ways.
l Henry VI IL, l."
When our cousins puzzle US by speak
ing of the "fall" instead of the ''autumn,"
they are again using good seventeenth
century English. Dryden mas
What crowds Of patients the town doctor
kills.
Or how last fall he raised the weekly bills"
The word ''sick,D which the Americans
use where most OF us use the word Ill"
had the meaning they ASST IN to it in the
days Of Chaucer, OF Shakespeare. and of
Pope. Where We speak OF a person being
plain, the Americans would describe him
as homely-Once more retaining perfect
~ classical usage. In Millions "Comus"
we have
1T is for homely features to keep home,
HtE HdN lLGtE udulc LututEs
The verb Ito white" most people.
probably, would pronounce to be newly
coined word; but it is not so. johnson
gives an example of its use from flake
with on Providence" book which was
published in 1927. 1t Is a coed word
having no equivalent IN the language,
aud those who have preserved il have
done wisely. The substantive "whittle,"
signifying a knife, is found in Shake
speare ("TimOn of Athens" ", y, but
seems to have died out not long after.
"Slick," again, we should az first sight
imagine TO be undoubtedly OF Yankee
manufacture, but we should be quite
wrong. Chapman (l6O3) describes the
god Apollo as "both slicke and daintie."
and later on in the century We md the
word used by sir Thomas Browne anu
/ Fuller. The former speaks OF slick
stones. e., smooth stones. A familiar
form OF salutatiOn which one hears some
times in the states, "How dye" Is not OF
native growth. but has me sanction Of
no less writer than Pope. Years make
! men more talkative," he Says, "but less
Writatiye; so that now write no letters
! but OF plain business, or plain how Dyes,
to those few | am forced To correspond
with"
In the case Of "cute" we have in one
and the same word 40 instance of the
l6gll DEeStEh dlIOn vi w gone usage
and the uuTarrantable introduction of
novelty. " hen Americans use IT in the
sense OF CLEVER" "sbarp.' they can
show that il was so employed In the past /;
out when in the sense OF pretty" they
can do no such thing. Many of the fair
sex use the word with its latter meaning
to an eXasperating extent. "Atn't he
cute?n you will hear whole chorus eX-
claim as they gaze in rapture on some
dresses" Other examples OF old words
that would have died out and been lost to
the language had they not been well
cared TOR in their new transatlantic home
might easily be cited. "Freshet," truly
described by Archbishop Trench as an
exquisite word. is one OF them; it is used
by Milton.
"All fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purllng brook"
Another Is "bluR," formerly, however.
used A. an adjective &c. g.. "a bluff penin-
sular prominence y" whereas the Ameri-
caus-iollowed by our own Tenny son,
"round the hills from bluff to bluff EN-
plOy II as substantive; others are
''snag," a word which we meet with in
Spenser ana in Dryden: "rile,' the same
as roll, an old verb signfyIug to disturb,
10 veX, and found in Chaucer,
The use OF the formal "sir' when ad
dressing stranger or person with whom
one has only slight acquaintance is an
otnpr instance OF toe retention by tue
Americans OF past modes Of speech. Good
illustrations Of this particular custom, as
it existed at the time that the new world
WAS being colonized, are found IN the
COmpleat Angler, whose author died in
the year which Philadelphia was founded
by Penn. such sentences as the follow
| ing are constantly occurring: "Sir, ]
] 4 Fa.x han
! far as Theobald's:" "Sir. my fortune has
/ answered my dt sires;' II am, sir, a
| brother Of the angle" and 80 on.
Ii is evident then that many so-called